ShareNumber of graduates who continue to study after completing their bachelor’s degree continues to grow and stands at 81% of total
According to AQU Catalunya’s 2023 employment outcomes survey, the number of graduates of brick-and-mortar universities in the Catalan university system who continue their university studies with a master’s degree, postgraduate degree or PhD is 6 out of 10.
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AQU Catalunya’s 2023 employment outcomes survey has provided relevant data on the number of people who have recently graduated from brick-and-mortar Catalan universities and continued on with their studies. Of all the people surveyed, which total more than 20,000, those who say they have continued studying for a master’s, postgraduate or PhD 3 to 4 years after graduation are almost 6 out of 10. Specifically, this group of graduates represents 56% of the total number of respondents.
With regard to postgraduate studies, the least common continuation of this training corresponds to graduates who, after finishing their bachelor’s degree, study another. This group accounts for only 4% of the total. In fact, compared to 2011, the number of graduates who choose to study a second bachelor’s degree has fallen by almost 8 percentage points. The AQU Catalunya survey also detected a decrease in the number of graduates who do not continue studying or who study things other than university education. These two groups are at 19%.
Overall, the number of people who do not stop studying after completing a degree is very high. The total number of respondents who continue training after graduation, whatever their training option, is 81%.
By field of knowledge, the graduates who most continue to study postgraduate degrees, master’s degrees and PhDs are those from the sciences. In this field, 78% of graduates continue with these other studies. Those who least continue with this type of studies are those from the field of social sciences, who follow this training path in 50% of cases.
Among those who do not continue to study any type of postgraduate training, noteworthy are engineering graduates, 28% of whom do not study anything else after finishing their bachelor’s degree. In fact, this group also stands out among those who pursue other studies that are not university level, identified in the graph with the heading Other.
The field in which more graduates continue to pursue a new bachelor’s degree is that of social sciences, in which 6% of graduates take this path. They are closely followed by those in the humanities, in which only 4% of graduates complete a new bachelor’s degree.
The 2023 AQU Catalunya report on employment outcomes presents the results of the 8th edition of this survey, conducted among graduates of Catalan universities. As with previous reports, the Agency makes data and other indicators available to all stakeholders in the Catalan university system in order to encourage analysis and reflection on how to improve bachelor’s degrees in terms of graduates’ employability and satisfaction with the education they received. The data used in this report is the product of a survey sent successfully to more than 42,000 graduates in the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic years. More than 52% of the contacted population responded to this year’s survey.
More than 120,000 records have been generated over the eight editions of the employment outcomes survey. This figure positions Catalonia as one of the European regions with the most extensive, complete and representative databases for this type of analysis.